Interaction and outeraction: instant messaging in action

By Bonnie A. Nardi, S. Whittaker, Erin Bradner. Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 2000

1,252 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We discuss findings from an ethnographic study of instant messaging (IM) in the workplace and its implications for media theory. We describe how instant messaging supports a variety of informal communication tasks. We document the affordances of IM that support flexible, expressive communication. We describe some unexpected uses of IM that highlight aspects of communication which are not part of current media theorizing. They pertain to communicative processes people use to connect with each other and to manage communication, rather than to information exchange. We call these processes "outeraction". We discuss how outeractional aspects of communication affect media choice and patterns of media use.

Subfields: Communication, Information Systems and Management, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/07792365f05ec0142e96a0358b973067bafd511c

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Communication

In Information Systems and Management

In Social Psychology

Citations in the corpus

Chatter on the red: what hazards threat reveals about the social life of microblogged information (2010, background): “As more people adopt and maintain a digital presence, these ever-advancing forms of chat-based environments draw attention not only because of the synchronous and lightweight interactions they support, but also for the new information relationships they produce and the manner in which the media is a”
NetWORKers and their Activity in Intensional Networks (2002, background): “These technologies have led to changes in established work-based communication practices (Markus, 1987, 1994; Sproull and Kiesler, 1991; Nardi, Whittaker and Bradner, 2000).”
Personal privacy through understanding and action: five pitfalls for designers (2004, background): “whether a lack of disclosure was intentional) [40, 41] and disclosing ambiguous information (e.”
The character, functions, and styles of instant messaging in the workplace (2002, background): “Instant Messaging (IM), in contrast, has become of great interest to the CSCW community because it is a tool that successfully supports informal communication [5, 6, 13, 14].”
ConNexus to awarenex: extending awareness to mobile users (2001, methodology): “Based on the Nardi et al. study [11], our own review of IM products, and visits to IM customers, we identified three design goals for a new workplace communication tool: (cid:127) Provide awareness cues to help people find opportune times to initiate contact (cid:127) Integrate multiple…”
--Understanding Effects of Proximity on Collaboration : Implications for Technologies to Support Remote Collaborative Work (2001, background): “The person can then read the log and retrieve the message upon his/her return (Nardi et al., 2000).”
Artifacts that organize: Delegation in the distributed organization (2013, background): “Organizations in this context can no longer – if they ever could – be examined solely or even primarily as social networks sustained by communication in the traditional sense.”
`IM me': Instant messaging as relational maintenance and everyday communication (2009, background): “An ethnographic study conducted by Nardi, Whittaker, and Bradner (2000) reported that, along with several task-related uses, participants identified relationship maintenance as a primary use of IM while at work.”
The Problem with `Awareness': Introductory Remarks on `Awareness in CSCW' (2002, background): “For example, while ‘awareness’ initially was adopted to denote those practices through which cooperative activities are somehow tacitly and unobtrusively aligned and integrated, some researchers are now using the very same term to conceptualize even the use of instant messaging systems where an acto”
An empirical study of global software development: distance and speed (2001, neutral): “, [25, 30]).”
Instant messaging in teen life (2002, methodology): “Existing empirical studies of IM examine mostly workplace use [2, 9, 10, 15, 24, 27], with findings sharing common features.”
Introducing instant messaging and chat in the workplace (2002, background): “INTRODUCTION Instant messaging (IM), after experiencing enormous popularity among recreational users, is beginning to move into the workplace [1, 13, 15], following on the heels of other forms of text-based computer-mediated communication (CMC) such as e-mail and MUD rooms [2].”
Culture Matters: A Survey Study of Social Q&A Behavior (2011, background): “On the other hand, people might target a specific community or part of their social network via SNS tools such as Instant Messaging (IM) (Nardi et al. 2000) or status message updates (Morris et al. 2010).”
Blogging as social activity, or, would you let 900 million people read your diary? (2004, background): “Such extensions also characterize instant messaging [12] and other media.”